This invention relates generally to devices for aiding in the self use of syringes, and more particularly, to a guide for inserting a syringe into a vial or medicine bottle.
When using a syringe to inject medicine, it is often desireable to provide a guide or other device to facilitate filling the syringe with the desired medicine from the medicine bottle. The guide helps align the syringe needle with the cap of the medicine vial and provides a more stable connection between the syringe and the medicine vial. While the use of syringe guides has facilitated the use of syringes, especially by non-medical personnel, the prior art syringe guides have left many areas available for improvement.
For example, many prior art syringe guides have failed to include a magnifying lens in the syringe guide to magnify the syringe and the writing on it. The magnifying lens is especially helpful if the syringe guide is intended to be used for injecting medicines customarily used by people with poor or reduced eyesight or in low light environments. The magnification not only helps a user see the writing and numbers on the syringe, and therefore allows the proper volume of medicine to be withdrawn, but it also enhances the visibility of the entire syringe, thus illuminating any undesired air bubbles in the medicine solution.
In addition, the construction of some prior art syringe guides has failed to allow easy extraction of generally all of the medicine in the medicine vial. The amount of medicine which is removed from the vial is determined by the depth of penetration of the needle into the vial. To remove the maximum contents in the vial, the needle should be inserted into the vial no further than the neck of the vial so that when the vial is inverted, as is typically done when filling a syringe, the needle will be immersed in the medicine regardless of the amount of medicine remaining in the vial. This limited penetration depth is especially advantageous given today's high cost of medicine and the consequent desire to avoid waste. While the depth of the needle can always be manually adjusted, a syringe guide which automatically limits the depth of penetration to the desired amount is especially helpful.
Another area for improvement of syringe guides relates to their ease of cleaning. The repeated use of a syringe guide for administering medicine often tends to result in spills of the medicine on the syringe guide. When dry, the spills tend to be opaque and, therefore, are desirably washed off. Some prior art syringe guides, however, are constructed with air pockets in the syringe guide and cannot be immersed in water. If immersed, water droplets and/or condensation remains in the air pockets or spaces preventing proper viewing and use of the syringe on the syringe guide. This non-immersion requirement means that the syringe guide must be carefully washed, which makes the use of the syringe guide more burdensome. Such limited cleaning techniques can also fail to completely clean all medicine residue from the guide, thereby impairing visibility through the guide to the syringe or writing thereon, especially when the guide is designed to enhance visibility of the syringe.
Prior art syringe guides have also suffered from having the medicine vial easily bumped off or out of place with respect to the guide. Such relative insecurity of the medicine vial retention thereby makes the syringe guide more difficult to use, and often necessitates a user having to separately hold the vial using both hands. If the vial must be separately held, the ease of using the syringe is diminished.
It is also desireable that syringe guides be as inexpensive as possible to manufacture, be entirely transparent to enable viewing of the syringe and vial, and be easy to use. The ease of use is increased by both removing any closed apertures on the syringe guide through which the syringe must be carefully threaded and by designing the syringe guide such that the syringe easily slides on it.
A need can therefore be seen for a new syringe guide which overcomes all of these disadvantages of the prior art, and fully takes into account the foregoing design considerations.